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November 21, 2024
 

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Jeff Kingston
Jeff Kingston lives in Tokyo, teaches history at Temple University Japan and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 1988. "Contemporary Japan" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) is his most recent book.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 6, 2001
Japan must open the doors if it is to survive
JAPAN AND GLOBAL MIGRATION: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society, edited by Mike Douglass and Glenda Roberts. London: Routledge, 2000, 306 pp., 63 British pounds. Japan's demographic time bomb is ticking away. In the coming decades, the nation faces a labor shortage and insolvency...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 8, 2001
Enjoy a meander down the magnificent Mekong
THE MEKONG: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, by Milton Osborne. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2000, $24. This elegiac tribute to the Mekong River is an occasion for a comfortable chair and a languorous afternoon. The intrepid armchair traveler is transported to this magnificent locale and can almost...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2000
Cold War roots of a noisy marriage
AMERICA AND THE JAPANESE MIRACLE: The Cold War Context of Japan's Postwar Economic Revival, 1950-1960, by Aaron Forsberg. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 332 pp. $45. Recurring Japan-U.S. trade disputes have hogged the limelight for way too long, forcing assiduous readers...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 28, 2000
Thunderstruck by the Asian ascent
THUNDER FROM THE EAST: Portrait of a Rising Asia, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 377 pp., $27.50. This is a mediocre potboiler of scant significance. One suspects that these Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters for The New York Times know a great deal more about...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2000
Textbooks in the service of the state
CENSORING HISTORY: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, edited by Laura Hein and Mark Selden. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, 301 pp., $24.95. History loomed over the recent visit of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji like a threatening storm cloud. But other than some scattered...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 26, 2000
'New Order' was an old nightmare
INDONESIA: The Long Oppression, by Geoff Simons. London: MacMillan/ N.Y.: St. Martins, 2000, 289 pp. $35. Indonesia is just beginning the long process of coming to terms with and overcoming the consequences of three decades of dictatorship under President Suharto. His New Order regime was dominated...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 15, 2000
An activist Emperor, pulling the strings
HIROHITO AND THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN, by Herbert P. Bix. New York: HarperCollins, 2000, 800 pp, $28 (cloth). This is a blistering and persuasive reassessment of Emperor Showa's reign, debunking the various myths that have accumulated about his allegedly powerless role in Japan's prolonged period...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2000
End this dysfunctional relationship
LEAVING JAPAN: Observations on the Dysfunctional U.S.-Japan Relationship. By Mike Millard. M.E. Sharpe: Armonk, NY, 2000, 200 pp., $37.95. The $79-billion question is why does the United States continue to tolerate the lopsided economic relationship with Japan that led to a such a massive trade imbalance...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 8, 2000
Japan's media watchdog is a lap dog
CLOSING THE SHOP: Information Cartels and Japan's Mass Media, by Laurie Anne Freeman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, 256 pp. $39.50 (cloth). This excellent book lays bare the mechanisms of the information cartels in Japan that prop up the state, insulate the elite from sustained critical...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 25, 2000
The debate on Nanjing is now closed
DOCUMENTS ON THE RAPE OF NANKING, edited by Timothy Brook. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1999, 301 pp., 2,616 yen. AMERICAN GODDESS AT THE RAPE OF NANKING: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, by Hua-ling Hu. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000, 184 pp. The adversity...
CULTURE / Books
May 30, 2000
Only atom bombs could end WWII
DOWNFALL: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, by Richard B. Frank. New York: Random House, 1999, 484 pp., $35 (cloth). The tragic folly of the war-mongering leaders of Imperial Japan and their casual disregard for the welfare of their fellow citizens seem almost forgotten because the end of the...
CULTURE / Books
May 16, 2000
Asia's storm clouds haven't dispersed
ASIAN STORM: The Economic Crisis Examined, by Philippe Ries. Translated by Peter Starr. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2000, 2,800 yen. The economic typhoons that swept though Asia in 1997 capsized regional economies, sent the misery index skyrocketing, wiped out colossal amounts of wealth, swept away an aging dictator...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2000
Lessons of the Nanjing debate
THE NANJING MASSACRE IN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY, edited by Joshua Fogel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; 238 pp, $49 (cloth), $15.98 (paper). Did the Nanjing Massacre really happen? In a review of Katsuichi Honda's excellent book on this subject last year ("The Nanjing Massacre:...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 28, 2000
Blindness tips the scales of history
THE POSTWAR CONSERVATIVE VIEW OF ASIA: How the Political Right has Delayed Japan's Coming to Terms with its History of Aggression in Asia, by Yoshibumi Wakamiya. Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation, 1999, 370 pp. 3,000 yen, This study of Japan's dilatory and grudging attempts to come to terms...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 16, 2000
Will Indonesia survive Suharto?
INDONESIA BEYOND SUHARTO, edited by Donald Emmerson. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999, 395 pp., $26.95 (paper). Can Indonesia succeed in returning the troops to the barracks? Can it afford not to? Recent rumors of an impending coup against President Abdurrahman Wahid, moves by the president against some...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 25, 2000
Women pay for Asia's successes
WOMEN IN THE NEW ASIA, by Yayori Matsui. London: Zed Books, 1999, 194 pp., $19.95 (paper). THE SEX SECTOR: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia, edited by Linda Lean Lim. Geneva: International Labor Office, 1998, 232 pp., SFR35. Yayori Matsui, author of "Women in the New...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 1999
Japanese politics, a model democracy
JAPANESE DEMOCRACY: Power, Coordination and Performance, by Bradley Richardson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 325 pp.. $17. Do the revisionists have any clothes? Bradley Richardson argues that the interpretations of Japan popularized by the revisionist school do not bear scrutiny and that...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 1999
Back to the brink in Indonesia
"What we have now in Indonesia is the same old New Order without Suharto. Nothing is really changing."
CULTURE / Books
Aug 18, 1999
Yes, there was a Nanjing Massacre
Did the 1937 Nanjing Massacre really happen? This might seem like an absurd question, but then the recently elected governor of Tokyo is on record as having denied that the looting, rape and assembly-line murder reported by eyewitnesses ever took place. The Dr. Feelgoods of Japanese history, Yoshinori...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 6, 1999
Glimpses of Indonesia after Suharto
THE POLITICS OF POST-SUHARTO INDONESIA, edited by Adam Schwarz and Jonathan Paris. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999, 120 pp.. $17.95 MILITARY DOCTRINES AND DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION: A Comparative Perspective on Indonesia's Dual Function and Latin American National Security Doctrines, by Jun...
Ishiba delays meeting with Trump, citing legal restrictions
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba waves upon arrival for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, in Callao, Peru, on Friday.
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Rising sex tourism exposes loopholes in Japan's anti-prostitution law
While financial misfortunes during the COVID-19 pandemic may have driven some women to work the streets, others simply want more money to spend — or want to pay off their debts — at host clubs.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
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Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
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